“We say very little, for we do not need to. We are silent together, each in her own world, knowing the other is just at her back.”

“They were a mother's words, words I would say to my own daughter if I were concerned for her”

“I wanted to wear the mantle and the pearls. I wanted to know the man who painted her like that.”

“He saw things in a way that others did not, so that a city I had lived in all my life seemed a different place, so that a woman became beautiful with the light on her face.”

“So many (too many) books are published every year, and it seems everyone is writing a book. Perhaps we should all be reading more and writing less!”

“Jane Austen easily used half a page describing someone else's eyes; she would not appreciate summarizing her reading tastes in ten titles.”

“I never said I didn't want to marry. It just didn't happen-Iam not the sort of lady a man chooses to marry, for I am too plain and too serious. Now I am reconciled to being on my own.”